I think the easy availability of working old gear has eroded the market for commercial ‘low end’ HF gear as a result only fancy ultra-sensitive

So… how would one go about obtaining some of this easily-available working old gear? At this point, it’s just curiosity, but I know someone in the States who’s looking to get some basic ham gear.

If Ben really wants to hear ISS he could try tuning in around 03/26 08:11 UTC, 03/27 09:40 UTC, 03/28 07:23, or 03/28 23:48 UTC. All of which will be nice high elevation passes from his location and which will bring ISS within 450mi. (or he could install a prediction program like gpredict himself and not depend on me feeling like looking it up)

Regarding the commentary on the prices of HF rigs .. it doesn’t have to be all that expensive. What is expensive is buying new HF rigs. I think the easy availability of working old gear has eroded the market for commercial ‘low end’ HF gear as a result only fancy ultra-sensitive … and somewhat expensive rigs are available new. The least expensive HF rigs available new are specialist boxes things which are lower power, or CW only, etc.. The new fancy rigs are nice and have sensitivity and selectivity that will knock the socks off decades old gear, but a lot of old stuff will work quite well for the basic purpose of communicating over long distances. On the used market you have many options.

With SSB, I understand you can pick up the data signal and load the real-time images on to your computer. Just being able to pick up anything with that old scanner was pretty amazing, though. I’m actually surprised that it’s that much harder to pick up on the ISS, given how much better your equipment is than mine.

“You just need an amplifier” makes it sound a bit simpler than it really is. Greg and I were pricing out amplifiers for high-wattage HF work a few days ago and the cheapest you’ll find at decent output levels is over $1,000.

For that price, you can get a pretty nice HF radio and an end-fed antenna and even make contact with stations that aren’t on the same side of the Earth as the Moon.

The antennas we used were a hard wire model (kind of like an old television antenna) mounted on top of the chimney, and a soft wire model strung from the house to and around a tree (kind of like holiday lights).

You can do transatlantic with VHF/UHF, too, via moonbounce; you just need an amplifier and a directional antenna (a basic Yagi should do).

That said, you really should get your HF privs, an HF rig, and a 20m end-fed dipole (such as one of these). You won’t get the world’s greatest performance with one of these, but it’ll be more than good enough to do at least some DXing. 10m propagation isn’t going to pick up for at least another couple of years, so I’d bend your efforts toward 20m. A 20m end-fed dipole is only 33 feet long. If your apartment doesn’t give you room for that, get a generator and go play in the field. :)

Also, if I managed to hear a six inch long satellite using my setup, I should easily be able to hear the much, much larger International Space Station. I just need to wait for a closer orbit.